Posts in Rocket Launch

Science &amp; Technology / Space · About After six successful missions to the International Space Station, including five official resupply missions for NASA, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft are set to liftoff from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, for their sixth official Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission to the orbiting lab. Liftoff is targeted for Monday April 13, 2015, at 4:33pm EDT…

Mike Brown | Reuters The unmanned Falcon 9 rocket launched by SpaceX lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida January 10, 2015. Just five years ago, its Falcon 9 rocket—a two-stage launch vehicle capable of hauling nearly 30, pounds to low-Earth orbit—had never made the journey to space. Now it regularly services the International Space Station, enjoys a multiyear backlog of commercial payload missions worth…

By Ken Kremer KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – Now just a day away, all systems are “GO” for blastoff of the next SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon CRS-6 cargo capsule on Monday, April 13, on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) and a near simultaneous historic attempt to soft land the boosters first stage on a barge in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean, hundreds of miles offshore from the US eastern seaboard. In advance of Mondays…

The loss of today’s Falcon 9 rocket is a critical one for NASA. The vehicle carried, from food and water to about 70 scientific experiments to hardware for the space station itself. Among that hardware was the first of two, designed to make it possible for commercial crew vehicles being developed by SpaceX and Boeing to dock to the space station. This 1, -pound adapter was due to be installed during a future spacewalk to allow SpaceX’s Dragon and…

Less than two years after SpaceX began producing the Merlin 1D engines that power the Falcon 9 rocket, the 100th Merlin 1D engine is complete. SpaceX is currently the largest private producer of rocket engines in the world.The Merlin 1D is an all-American engine designed and built in-house at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. Engines are currently manufactured at a rate of four per week, projected to rise to five per week by the end of 2014…

Photo credit: Falcon 9 launches six Orbcomm-OG2 satellites by U.S. Air Force/Senior Airman Natasha Dowridge via Wikimedia Commons SpaceX is conducting its second mission for China’s Asia Satellite Telecommunications Company Sunday, with Falcon 9 deploying the AsiaSat6 satellite into a geosynchronous orbit. Liftoff is scheduled for 12:35 a.m. EST (04:35 UTC), from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. SpaceX designed the Falcon series of launch vehicles…

“When people see this cost comparison, they ask all over again ‘How can he (Musk) do that?’ How can the Falcon outperform the Delta by such a wide margin? The three main reasons seem to be (1) low manufacturing cost (2) low operational cost (time efficient operations design and low man-hours needed per launch) and (3) high efficiency performance in flight. The first two have already been demonstrated by the Falcon 9, and they continue to be improved…

Dragon’s next trip to the International Space Station (ISS) is now targeting a launch date of NET (No Earlier Than) March 16, following consultation between SpaceX and NASA. This will be Dragon’s first ride on the upgraded Falcon 9 v1.1, with the launch tracking a T-0 of 04:41 Eastern from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40). CRS-3/SpX-3: Both Orbital’s Cygnus and Dragon were initially provided with a December, 2013 placeholder for their…

SpaceX believes they have “all the necessary pieces” to achieve a full recovery of the booster stage, with the next launch of their Falcon 9 v1.1 set to test another key technology towards that aim, via the debut of landing legs on the aft of the first stage. While there is a low likelihood SpaceX will be able to recover the first stage of the CRS-3 Falcon 9 from the water, the returning booster will attempt to deploy its landing legs during its descent…